


As Long As Something Changes

by raz0rgirl



Category: Returner (2002)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:43:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raz0rgirl/pseuds/raz0rgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leaving the past is nothing like coming to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Long As Something Changes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Delphinapterus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphinapterus/gifts).



**Now [2002]**

Leaving the past is nothing like coming to it. There's no kaleidoscope of color. No sensation of falling. When Milly begins to disappear, it's a surprise, though maybe it shouldn't have been. She's completed her mission, and it was better than she could have ever hoped. She hadn't known what would happen after. She'd speculated, of course, but she'd had no concrete expectations. She hadn't expected this. Of all of the possibilities she'd considered, just disappearing-- _winking out of existence like it was nothing_ \--wasn't one she'd truly entertained.

But it makes a kind of sense.

She has changed history. Modified the course of all events that would come after this moment, perhaps including her own birth.

It's strange, watching herself disappear when she can still feel the solid surface beneath her. Still draw air into her lungs. Still see the expanse of sea and sky around her. It shouldn't feel so _normal_.

Milly calls to Miyamoto--wants to tell him goodbye. She's never believed in things like fate, but she's almost tempted to start when she thinks about how unlikely it was that he's the one she'd found. That they were able to do what they did, and that it turned out so much better than she'd ever hoped.

Miyamoto seems to think that she's returning to the future. She lets him think that. It's easier that way--easier to joke that it's only the expanse of time pulling them apart at the moment. But she admits to herself that she's scared. She doesn't want to die--finds she hates the idea of ceasing to exist, not because the natural process of her life has come to an end, but because of some sort of cosmic symmetry that holds little comfort as the world around her begins to fade. _I want to stay_ she thinks but doesn't say out loud.

And then there is nothing.

It's completely dark, completely still, when she realizes that "nothing" is the wrong word. She is still aware. It's a strange awareness, informed by no stimulus other than her own thoughts, and she wonders if this is some kind of an afterlife? A way station to a next life? Spiritual matters had never held much interest to her, but she finds herself wishing she had talked with some of the monks who lived in the village adjacent to the base at some point. Her life had been short, but no one could say it wasn't eventful. And yet, nothing had prepared her for this, whatever "this" was.

"Extraction complete."

She hears the words--understands what they mean even though she's aware that they're spoken in a language she does not know. She feels herself blinking. It's a strange feeling in the complete darkness. She reaches up--can't see her hand but feels it when she touches her face.

"Concurrence integration in five--four--three..."

Milly draws in a deep breath, then calls hello into the darkness. Light blooms around her, sudden and as bright as full daylight. She has to close her eyes tight against it after the pervasive darkness.

She says hello again. This time, the voice answers back.

"Hello," it says. "Welcome."

 

 **Then [2084]**

When Milly first arrives at the base, they try to ask her about what she can do so they can figure out what role she can take. She doesn't have it in her to answer--doesn't have it in her to say anything at all. They leave her to her grief for the first few days. Then they put her on a maintenance crew.

It's a good job. The work is hard. Satisfyingly so. She can be useful while staying indoors. Most days, she works hard enough that it's easy not to think about everything else.

She's introduced to Mei-Zhen during her third week at the base. Mei-Zhen is a technician working on whatever it is the base holds. It's obviously a huge project, but Milly hasn't been able to piece together the whole story. She hasn't been able to care enough to consciously try, but she's found that she can't completely shut off her brain. She's always made connections--put things together. And she knows that the room she's in, full of dials and read-outs, is a part of a larger whole.

Instead of the larger scale cleaning she's been doing in other areas of the base, she's to do fine cleaning of the seemingly hundreds knobs and read-outs along the wall. This is Mei-Zhen's post--it's her job to monitor the read-outs--and she shows Milly how to clean the dials without disturbing them.

Milly cleans the wall twice a week from then on, working around Mei-Zhen. Mei-Zhen talks while they both do their work, sometimes listing the tests she has to run that day, sometimes just talking about what's happened since the last time she saw Milly. Milly never verbally responds, but she always listens. Mei-zhen never talks about anything important in terms of the base, and Milly suspects there are things Mei-zhen isn't allowed to talk to her about. But Milly finds she likes the steady flow of Mei-Zhen's words.

Milly is working in the far corner of the room on the day the strange man barges into it. Milly has never seen him before, which is odd, because she's seen most of the base and the people in it through her work.

The narrow room is suddenly crowded with all three of them in it, especially when the man pushes into Mei-Zhen's space, demanding she explain to him to the purposes of all of the individual controls. When he shoves Mei-Zhen, the words leave Milly's mouth before she's consciously aware of them: "Leave her alone."

It's quiet, her voice scratchy with weeks of disuse.

The man's eyes narrow at her as if he's seeing her for the first time. He's much bigger than she is--larger than Mei-Zhen, too--and he's blocking the only door to the room. Milly realizes the feeling rushing through her, pushing up through the numbness of her grief, is fury. She knows there is little she can do against him--that he could probably hurt her and Mei-Zhen before they could escape from the room--but she has never been one to sit back when others are in danger. At least she hadn't before her brother's death.

She steps between the man and Mei-Zhen, tries to get him to move aside. He doesn't, and she's not sure what to do for a moment other than continue to stare him down. Then he shakes his head and mutters something under his breath before turning to leave the room.

Once he's gone, Mei-Zhen starts to shake and sits on the floor.

"Who was that?" Milly asks.

Mei-Zhen's eyes fix on her.

"You're talking," Mei-Zhen says.

Milly nods.

"What's your name?" Mei-Zhen asks, and Milly tells her.

Mei-Zhen says, "Thank you, Milly."

After that, everything changes.

Once they leave the room, Milly doesn't see Mei-Zhen again for a week. In that time, Milly finds her voice has come back for good, and she is finally able to answer the questions they had tried to ask her when she'd first arrived. She's gained a reputation for being willing to work hard from her months on maintenance. Now they know she is willing to fight, has a strong memory, and is good at making connections and finding patterns. They adjust her schedule to include basic combat training. They also tell her about the nature of the project the base houses.

Milly smiles when she next meets Mei-Zhen and says, "So all this time, I've been helping clean a time machine?"

Mei-Zhen smiles back and says, "You've been helping clean _part_ of a time machine, yes. A very important part, mind you, that has to stay clean to function properly. As you know, keeping anything clean around here is a challenge."

Milly is to continue to meet with Mei-Zhen several times a week, but in addition to her cleaning duties, Milly will also train as her apprentice.

"We all cross-train," Mei-Zhen explains. "There are too few humans left for many people to be able to specialize. We need the redundancy."

No one has explained to Milly what happened the last time they were in this room, so she asks Mei-Zhen as they work on a top-to-bottom systems check on all of the dials.

Mei-Zhen's face darkens, but she answers. "This isn't the only project on the base, but it's the dominant one. Before we realized we had a chance at this, this base focused on weapons development and trying to capture Daggra technology to reverse engineer. There's a sizable faction who think that the time travel plan is a waste of effort and resources and that it should be scrapped. Some of them, like the man from last week, want to force the issue. My worry is that one day, they'll move into sabotage."

"You think there's a chance the project will work?" Milly asks.

"No one really knows what's going to happen," Mei-Zhen says.

"What do you think?" Milly asks.

"I think it's worth trying," Mei-Zhen says. "There are lots of ideas about how this could work. We could go back and change things, and it could be like this timeline never existed. Then there's the idea of multiple universes. If we're successful and send something back, then any changes will create a new universe entirely at the point where things change while the other universe--our timeline--goes on. Some people think it's impossible--that the universe won't allow us to make changes, and this is all an exercise in futility."

"Which do you believe?" Milly asks.

"I don't know," Mei-Zhen replies.

"Which one do you want to be true?" Milly asks.

"I don't think it really matters," Mei-Zhen says, "as long as something changes. But it's worth a try, Milly, because we can't beat the Daggra doing what we've been doing. No miracle weapon is going to save us."

Later, when the Daggra attack, it's Mei-Zhen's words--"as long as something changes"--Milly thinks of when she jumps into the timestream.

 

 **Soon**

Milly watches on the monitor as Miyamoto watches himself disappear. She wishes she could tell him that he will be all right. That this isn't his second near-death experience of the day, or hour, or almost as many minutes, really. That the way he understands things like days and hours is about to change in a way it thrills her to even think about.

She's the one who greets him when the integration is complete, and she's the one who answers his first questions.

"Milly?" he asks, once the effects of the integration wear off enough for him to speak.

"In the flesh," she says, smiling.

"Is this the future?" Miyamoto asks, looking around the integration chamber.

"Not exactly," Milly replies. "The best way to think about it is as being in a bubble that exists outside of time."

"What do you mean?" Miyamoto asks.

"If the universe is an equation, then we're the remainders."

"I was never very good at maths, Milly."

"There's no place for either of us in our timelines anymore. Things have changed too much, and we were the cause. This is a ship that collects space/time anomalies. Like us."

"You're making my head hurt."

She smiles at him and says, "It took a while for me to get my head around it, too. The others can explain it better than I can, but I figured it would be best if I were the one to meet you when you first got here."

"What happened? How did I get here in the first place?"

"It turns out the Daggra are only one of many, many civilizations out there. Some travel through space. Some travel through time. Some do both. But there are rules. If the changes are too great, you can get thrown out of time and space altogether. That used to mean you just ceased to exist. But a long time ago, one of the oldest civilizations figured out how to make pockets outside of time and space. Then they figured out how to make ships that can exist within those pockets. There's a pattern that shows up if you know where and how to look for it. That's what the crew of this ship does--looks for the pattern and collects whatever's making it. Like us."

He takes out the plate with the bullet in it.

"It seems you've saved me more than once today," he says.

Extracting Miyamoto had been a two-step process. She'd first had to make sure he'd survived the shooting that would have killed him. She'd only found out about that when they'd let her check in on him, curious to see how he would finish out his life. She had hoped to find an obituary of an old man who'd lived a full life. Instead, she'd found that he'd be killed within days of leaving. But when she'd saved his life, she'd also removed him from his place in time and space.

Milly shakes her head and thinks of Mei-Zhen when she says, "Things have changed, Miyamoto. 'Today' doesn't matter anymore. We're outside of time."

Miyamoto nods and grins, then asks, "So is there anything to eat?"

Milly rolls her eyes, then tugs on his sleeve to get him to stand up. "Come on," she says. "Let me show you."


End file.
